Absurd Details on Natal’s Cirque du Soleil Event

We’ve reported before on Microsoft‘s lavishly planned E3 Project Natal event, which is going to involve a performance by Cirque du Soleil, and that press will not be allowed to bring electronics in.

Well, the show goes up tomorrow night, and the LA Times has some new details on what we’ll all miss, at least until someone inevitably uploads a shoddy YouTube video of it.

And yes, an elephant is involved.

Apparently Michel Laprise, artistic director for Cirque, wowed Microsoft executives with nothing but three rocks, a flashlight, a pail of sand, and a small wooden elephant.  According to Don Mattrick, Senior Vice President of MS’s Interactive Entertainment Business unit, who could maybe stand to watch a little less Reading Rainbow:

He used the power of words to share what he saw in his imagination.

Charming.

The story of the forty five minute performance that’s supposed to accompany the announcement or demonstration of Microsoft’s new motion sensing technology for the Xbox will be of a young boy looking for three fallen meteors, and figuring out what they mean.

According to Laprise:

It’s a story about humanity, about a quest and about overcoming obstacles.  In history, there have been discoveries that have made us leap forward as a civilization. But those technologies demanded that we master their language, the language of machines. This time, it’s the machine that’s adapting. The human is at the center, doing what comes naturally. Moving, jumping, talking. And it’s up to the machine to interpret what that means.

Somehow, this requires a 9-foot elephant puppet. Well, actually, if Cirque du Soleil says they need a 9-foot elephant puppet, I’m sure they actually need it.

But does Microsoft need it?  The more we hear about the Natal show, the more it reminds us of this:

Probably not what Microsoft has in mind.

(via Eurogamer.)